220 to 40 ~ the paper pile

President’s Day, so no school today. I spent the morning tackling a chore that I absolutely loathe to do… the paper pile.

The current paper pile was so very, very large. It consisted of 4-5 smaller piles of house bills, medical bills, insurance papers, school forms, junk mail… and the pile of things that don’t go anywhere but you can’t throw away.

It was out of hand.

At least the first two hours were devoted strictly to medical bills. Our “insurance” that’s not really insurance, Medi-share, does a great job covering all of our needs, but it is important to make sure that the medical billing office works correctly with them, so I like to double-check everything. I’m working on getting reimbursed for a few things which would be SO GOOD at this point in time.

After bills were all sorted (whew), it was time to address the budget system again. After a little research I decided to go with Mint (instead of continuing with Everydollar), and set up the monthly cash flow.

The Smiths are horrible budgeters.

We have tried budgeting so many times. It’s just not in our systems to be that organized! However, it is one of those things that is important (necessary) if you want to get ahead and not just be okay month to month, so here we go again.

The paper pile was massively reduced today, so today was a victory. No-guilt days are the best days. I’m looking forward to not having that mess hanging over my head tomorrow 🙂

In other news, I’ve started making space in the day for music again. A little guitar everyday to learn a song that’s on my guitar playing bucket list (songs I want to memorize and have in my mental library), and I pulled the drum set out of storage and made a place for it in the garage.